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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28339335">In the Bleak Midwinter</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/richmahogany/pseuds/richmahogany'>richmahogany</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Lewis (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Christmas, Gen, Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 19:21:21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>12,731</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28339335</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/richmahogany/pseuds/richmahogany</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Christmas. Lewis has some leave and goes off to Manchester. James remains at work and deals with several non-cases. Hathaway-centric, so you can imagine that Christmas cheer is in short supply, but there are some lighter moments.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. 23rd December</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I'm a bit apprehensive as I have never posted something that wasn't entirely finished, so I feel like I'm tempting fate here! But it's all planned out in my head, so I suppose the risk isn't too great. And I wanted to give all of you who are still propping up this fandom a bit of a Christmas present.<br/>Edit: I needn't have worried. The last chapter is up, and the work is now complete.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Well, that’s me done,” said Robbie Lewis, stretching his back and switching off the computer. Hathaway looked up from his own screen.</p><p>“Will you be driving straight off, sir?” he asked. Lewis had managed to get leave from now until New Year and was off to celebrate Christmas at his daughter’s. It would be his first Christmas with his grandson, and he was very much looking forward to it. </p><p>“No, I’ll go early tomorrow morning. At this time it will take me an hour just to get out of Oxford, and if I wait it’ll be too late.”</p><p>“Give Lyn my regards,” said Hathaway. He still hadn’t met Lewis’ daughter, but he had spoken to her on the phone a couple of times. </p><p>“Let me know if the little one has learned to say granddad yet.”</p><p>“He’s only a few months old! They can’t all be as precocious as you.”</p><p>“No, indeed. Better for him if he isn’t.”</p><p>Then, realising that he had sounded a bit too gloomy, he said quickly:</p><p>“I hope you have a lovely time, sir.”</p><p>“I’m sorry you don’t have any time off. You could have done with a break, too.”</p><p>Hathaway shrugged. </p><p>“I wouldn’t have had any other plans anyway.”</p><p>“Just – don’t work too hard, okay?”</p><p>“It’s not up to me, sir.”</p><p>“No, but I worry what you’ll do to yourself when I’m not here to have an eye on you.”</p><p>“It’ll be nice for me to get out from under your penetrating gaze for once, don’t you think? You should just go and enjoy your holiday. Forget about this place. Honestly, I’ll be happier if I know you’re having a good time.”</p><p>“Alright. I’ll be off then. Merry Christmas, James.”</p><p>“Merry Christmas, sir.”</p><p>They smiled at each other, and then Lewis left. </p><p>Hathaway turned back to his computer screen. There’d be plenty to do over the holidays, and someone had to do it. While the more twisted murderers usually gave them a break at this time of year, Christmas was peak time for domestic violence and suicides. Someone had to be around to deal with those cases, and he was hardly the only one. And unlike Lewis, he wouldn’t miss anything by being at work.</p><p>They had wrapped up their latest case just in time, otherwise Innocent probably wouldn’t have consented to Lewis taking more than a week off. But their investigation had thrown up the possibility that the perpetrator was tied to more than one unsolved murder from the past. Hathaway had ordered up the evidence from those cases from the archive, but it hadn’t been delivered yet.<br/>
He finished off the last report from their just concluded case, sent it to Innocent and switched his computer off. </p><p>It was only half past six when he unlocked the door to his flat. He had stopped on the way to pick up his favourite Indian takeaway, and yet he felt that he was home ridiculously early. He would have the whole evening and tomorrow morning to himself – he had been assigned to a later shift the next day. It wasn’t Christmas Day, it wasn’t even Christmas Eve, but having so many hours off work was almost like a mini-holiday. James decided that he would take the time to make himself comfortable and only do enjoyable things. The time is now, the place is here, he thought. This would be as close to a Christmas celebration as he would get. </p><p>He put on some music, spread out his food and took his time eating it, with an interesting book for company. Afterwards he persuaded himself to do the bit of washing-up – dried-on curry was no fun the next day. That little task accomplished, he poured himself a glass of wine and sank down onto the couch. He had treated himself to a particularly nice bottle for Christmas, so he sat back and savoured his drink. He took up his guitar, and for a while he amused himself by inventing increasingly jazzy versions of Silent Night and El Noi De La Mare.<br/>
When he got bored with that, he put his guitar away and ambled over to the bookcase. Something relaxing and fun to read, that would be the thing for now. Christmas somehow always put into his head the image of Victorian gentlemen, sitting by the fireplace or carving the Christmas goose for their families, full of complacency and contentment. Big country houses, Yule balls, young ladies setting their cap at rakish bachelors, to the chagrin of their more conservative fathers. That was the sort of thing he was in the mood for. So what to pick? Dickens? Maybe a bit too clichéd for Christmas, even if one avoided the obvious “Christmas Carol”. Trollope, maybe. Something unexciting, but with enough interest to keep him going for a few hours, and which conjured the right atmosphere. Accordingly he plucked his copy of “The Prime Minister” from the shelf and returned to the couch with it. With the wine, the book, and the odd mince pie, he managed to create for himself one of the most peaceful evenings he had enjoyed in a long time. He read his book, toasted himself with the wine, and finally took himself off to bed, just before he could drop off on the couch.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>"The time is now, the place is here,<br/>And the whole world is filled with cheer" - Run DMC, "Christmas in Hollis"</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0002"><h2>2. 24th December</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The next day Hathaway didn’t have to be in the office until lunchtime. He had planned to have a proper lie-in, but found himself awake at 8 o’clock. He decided that he might as well go for a run. He didn’t run regularly these days, but occasionally he felt that he should somehow compensate for the cigarettes he would smoke afterwards. When he stepped outside, he found himself enveloped by thick fog. The temperature had dropped to freezing levels overnight, but instead of producing one of those brilliantly sunny winter days, the world was shrouded in damp and gloom. Under the circumstances he didn’t extend the run for very long and was soon back home for a hot shower and a hotter breakfast. He sat in the kitchen, taking his time over his scrambled egg and toast, with a whole pot of coffee and last night’s novel which he had retrieved from the living room. The situation put him in something of a holiday mood. Unless the phone rang, he would have a few leisurely hours to himself during which he could take it easy. The opportunity to just do nothing didn’t come along very often, and James decided to make the most of it. He firmly pushed any thoughts of things he should be doing – like cleaning the bathroom or doing the laundry - aside and enjoyed his book and his coffee.</p><p>The fog didn’t show any signs of lifting, but James resolved to go outside anyway. He had spent too much time at his desk in the office recently, and a bit more movement would do him good.<br/>
He set off in the direction of the river, stopping to get a cappuccino and a hot chocolate. There was someone he might see. He wasn’t sure if he would be there or not, but something told him that he would be. And if not, he would just drink the hot chocolate himself.<br/>
As he approached the particular spot on the river, he saw that his instinct had been right. The young man stood in front of his easel, as always, looking at the swirling mist on the river and trying to replicate the effect on his canvas. His hands were red and frozen, and his coat didn’t look warm enough, but he seemed oblivious to anything but the landscape in front of him. This was a different spot from the one he had frequented when they had first met. The young painter had shifted to a different location about a year after the girl’s death, but again he was there, day after day, recording the changes in the weather and the seasons in his paintings.<br/>
James’ footsteps crunched on the frozen grass as he approached.</p><p>“Hello, Philip,” he said.</p><p>“Hello, Detective Sergeant Hathaway.”</p><p>James stood next to the easel.</p><p>“Do you mind if I watch?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>James looked at the canvas. The fog which Philip had painted looked almost luminous. It obscured the trees on the far side, but there was a hint of them visible, more like a memory of the trees than the trees themselves. He supposed that the fog was like the clouds: this is what it looked like on this particular day, and it would never look like that again. For some reason the thought satisfied him.</p><p>He held out one of his paper cups to Philip.</p><p>“Would you like this hot chocolate?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>Philip turned to him and took the cup.</p><p>“Thank you.”</p><p>They both stood side by side for a moment, watching the fog.</p><p>James was about to say “are you staying here for Christmas” when it occurred to him that the answer was pretty obvious. So instead he asked:</p><p>“Is your family not disappointed that you don’t stay with them for Christmas?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>Here even Philip realised that a bit more elaboration was called for, so he added:</p><p>“They have lots of other people visiting. My gran and my mother’s sister and her husband and my two cousins. And then they leave, and my father’s sister and her husband come. They don’t have any children, though.”</p><p>James doubted that Philip had given much thought to what his parents might be thinking, but he could see the attraction of a freezing riverbank over a house full of relatives.</p><p>“Is your family not disappointed that you don’t stay with them over Christmas?” Philip asked now.</p><p>“No. I didn’t get the time off anyway. I have to work this afternoon and tomorrow all day and the day after as well.”</p><p>He didn’t say that what family he had surely did not want to see him over Christmas. Or at any other time. Or even if they did, he certainly didn’t. They were better off without each other.</p><p>Of course, Christmas had been a family affair when he was a child. At Crevecoeur, Lord Mortmaigne had liked to play the squire, assembling his staff in the hall, distributing presents. He remembered that when he was little, he had been given some lovely toys. They had been old, and old fashioned, probably from Lord Mortmaigne’s own childhood, but they had been nice to play with. At their home, his father had insisted on “Christmas as it should be”, which had meant that the festivities had taken on the character more of a performance than a celebration. It had lacked any of the warmth that the season was supposed to engender. Maybe it was for the best, he thought. You can’t grieve over the loss of something you never had.</p><p>Philip had taken a couple of sips of his hot chocolate, set the cup down and taken up his brush again. James watched for a few minutes as he added more layers of paint to his fog and began to sketch out the bare shrubs and stalks of the plants on their side of the river. He now became aware that his toes were completely frozen, and unlike Philip, he was not oblivious to the effects of the cold. He therefore turned to go. Philip, he knew, would stay until he was satisfied that he had captured the movement of the fog.</p><p>“Goodbye, Philip,” he said.</p><p>“Goodbye, Detective Sergeant Hathaway.”</p><p>James walked away, pleased that he got the chance to have that little talk. Interaction with Philip was easy and difficult at the same time. Difficult because he often didn’t know what to say or what response he would get. But also easy because he didn’t have to play the social game with Philip. He didn’t have to explain why he came to talk, and he didn’t have to make excuses when he went. Philip simply took everything at face value and would never be offended if it didn’t come in a socially acceptable package, and there were no hidden meanings in anything Philip said. James found that refreshing, which is why he visited the riverbank from time to time to see how Philip was getting on. </p><p>An hour later he arrived in his office. He had barely sat down when Gurdip poked his head round the door.</p><p>“Santa’s been, and he’s left you a pile of presents,” he said. </p><p>Hathaway got up again and looked. The evidence boxes had come from lock-up, and the description of “a pile” wasn’t far wrong. It took him several trips to ferry them from the front desk to the office, where he stacked them next to Lewis’ desk. Good thing Lewis wasn’t here, he thought, otherwise neither of us would be able to move in here. </p><p>He opened the boxes one by one, to get an overview of what they contained. They were the usual mixture of evidence bags and files. Actually, there didn’t seem to be that much physical evidence. Best to start with the paperwork. </p><p>Hathaway returned to his computer and started a spreadsheet, in which he entered the evidence for each of the cases they were looking at – just a brief keyword for everything, but that would give him a summary of all the cases at a glance. Perhaps a pattern would emerge from that. At least it would give him a pointer in which direction he should go with a more detailed analysis. That was the point of this whole case review, to discover possible connections which would only become obvious if the cases were looked at together, and which had been missed previously because they had been considered in isolation. </p><p>It took him quite a while to compile his spreadsheet, and no obvious pattern jumped out at him even after staring at it for half an hour. </p><p>The best approach, Hathaway decided, was to construct a timeline for each case, but in parallel, so that all the timelines could be viewed together. </p><p>He stepped into the corridor. It was mid-afternoon by now, and the station was relatively quiet. He therefore succeeded in borrowing a couple of whiteboards from deserted rooms. It wasn’t easy to squeeze them into the office as well, and he painfully rammed his thigh into the corner of the desk in the process, but he managed to set them up next to each other, effectively creating one very long whiteboard. He listed the cases in a column on the left and then started on the timelines. The dates were all different, of course, these cases went back years, but he took the point of commission of the crime as a starting point for each, marking the column with “X”. The days preceding the crime would then be X-1, X-2 etc., and those following the crime X+1, X+2 etc. If there were any connections between the way these crimes had been committed, any similarities, any pattern, this method should reveal them. Having established his system, Hathaway set about filling in the blanks, using the files to extract the facts, and linking the physical evidence by either taping the bag to the board or making a brief note when the bag was too big. </p><p>In this way he worked for a few hours, punctuated only by a few cigarette and coffee breaks. The task had turned out to be pretty difficult. So far the parallels didn’t seem to be very parallel. At times he sank deeply into the paperwork. There were contradictory witness statements, and at least one very unsatisfactory medical examiner’s report (not, he was relieved to note, submitted by Laura). </p><p>After another couple of hours Hathaway reviewed his results so far. The only similarities between the cases seemed to be those which had alerted them to the possibility of a connection before: the method (all the victims had been strangled) and the type of victim (they were all middle-aged women). Two had been murdered in their homes, one in South Park, one in the University Parks, and one in a student room at Lonsdale College. Not much of a similarity there. </p><p>Hathaway stared at the boards and rubbed his eyes. He decided to have another cigarette and then come back to it. He put on his coat and went outside. It had been dark for quite some time. What time was it now? Eight o’clock. Eight o’ clock on Christmas Eve. The streets were quiet, everybody who could had gone home to begin the holidays. The fog still hung thickly over the street and between the houses. There was a van parked on the other side. Hathaway could just make out a plumber’s name and logo. Someone else who was still working. He was a bit surprised though. This had to be a very conscientious plumber, to respond to a call-out at this time, on this day. One year the heating in his flat had packed up on the 24th, and it had been impossible to get anyone to see to it until after Boxing Day.</p><p>He finished his cigarette and went back inside. As he took his coat off, he glanced at his boards. Something snagged his attention. The van! A contractor’s van had been observed in front of the victim’s house in their most recent case, two days before she was murdered. And here, there was also a van – different contractor – two days before the murder from last year. He looked at his timeline. Yes, in each case, except one, some contractor’s van had been seen in the vicinity of the victim’s house, two or three days before the murder. Was that the pattern he had been looking for? They hadn’t tied the van to the suspect in their case, but not because they couldn’t, only because they had enough evidence anyway and hadn’t seen the need to pursue this. But was the van relevant? Had the murderer observed his victim? Had he used different vans? Easy enough to change the logos on the sides, so it might have been the same van each time. Was it possible to find out the make and model of the vans?<br/>
With a new-found energy Hathaway went back to the files.</p><p>When he re-surfaced, he was at least sure that he had found a trail worth pursuing. The observed van had been the same model in three of the cases, according to witness statements. In one case CCTV footage had been preserved, on a CD-Rom, of the street during the time in question, and he had spotted the van on it. He couldn’t be entirely sure of the model, but it looked like the same again. What he could see was the writing on the side, which this time purported to be that of a carpet fitter. And what convinced him even more that he was onto something was the fact that the names of the various contractors were fictitious, as far as he could make out. If they could somehow link their suspect with the van (or vans), or even, more specifically, with the purchase of the inscriptions – after all, you couldn’t just draw them on with permanent marker – then they would be a step closer to solving the cold cases as well. </p><p>Hathaway stood up and stretched. That was probably as far as he could get tonight. He hadn’t been paying attention to his surroundings for a few hours, but the corridor was now dark and quiet. When he looked at his watch, he saw that it was after 11. If he left now, he could make it to midnight mass at the Oratory. The almost-Christmas spirit which he had enjoyed last night had evaporated during the day. He didn’t go to mass very often either, but even he couldn’t escape the feeling that this time of year was special, and he wanted to mark the occasion in some sort of spiritual way.<br/>
He put on his coat, switched off the lights, closed the office door and left.</p>
  </div></div>
<a name="section0003"><h2>3. Christmas Day</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The call came at seven in the morning. Body of an apparently homeless man found near The Plain. Hathaway was ordered to deal with the crime scene on his own in the first instance and was only to call in a senior officer if it started to look suspicious.<br/>
As usual, Laura was already there where he arrived.</p><p>“Merry Christmas!” she said brightly. “All on your lonesome?”</p><p>“Yes, DI Lewis is in Manchester.”</p><p>“Yeah, I knew that. Just not used to seeing you without your Significant Other.”</p><p>“So, what have we got?”</p><p>“At first glance it looks like exposure to me.”</p><p>Laura knelt down again, and Hathaway bent over the body. It was that of a man, dressed in shabby clothes, with the hood of his anorak half covering his head. He recognised the red vest of a Big Issue seller. Something nagged at him, a nervous tension in his stomach that he couldn’t quite identify. There was no blood, it looked as if the man had just laid down, curled up and died. Next to him was a plastic bag with a few belongings, but not as much as he would have had if he had planned on sleeping on the streets. </p><p>“No injuries that would have caused his death,” Laura said. “He does have a bump on the head, but until I get a closer look I can’t tell you what that did to him.”</p><p>She pushed the hood down and turned the man’s head slightly, and the tingling in James’ stomach turned to the icy cold of certainty. He turned away for a moment to gain his composure, but Laura wasn’t fooled by his expressionless face.</p><p>“You know him?” she asked quietly.</p><p>Hathaway nodded.</p><p>“His name is Kevin. Don’t know his last name. I bought the Big Issue from him quite often. Had a chat a few times. I don’t know what he would be doing out here, he wasn’t normally sleeping rough.”<br/>
He bit his lip.<br/>
“I spoke to him only a couple of days ago.”</p><p>Laura gave him a sympathetic look.</p><p>“I’m sorry, James. But I’m pretty sure that this wasn’t a crime. It was just – unfortunate circumstances. I’ll do a proper examination, of course. Come and see me later for the results.”</p><p>Hathaway managed a nod and a smile, then he turned round to have a word with the SOCO supervisor and the PC who was guarding the scene. There would be no need for him to hang around here. He went back to the station and started the first draft of his report, which would be augmented later as more information came in. It looked like there wouldn’t be anything to investigate. But it felt wrong to him. It might have been unfortunate circumstances, as Laura said, but he thought he should find out what exactly happened. He owed it to Kevin not to dismiss his death as not worth the attention. The first step would be to properly identify him, with his full name, and to gather as much about his life history as he could. He fired up his computer and set to work.</p><p>It was afternoon when Dr Hobson called him and asked if he wanted to come round and get the autopsy results. When he entered and saw Kevin’s body laid out on the table, he felt another pang of sadness. He knew that there were many homeless people in the city, and that some of them died every winter. He was sad about that, too, but it was different when it happened to someone you sort of knew. Laura shot him a sympathetic look, but didn’t say anything. Instead she launched straight into the explanation of the result of her examination.</p><p>“First off, my first impression was correct, and the cause of death was hypothermia. But it’s not quite straightforward. Let me show you.”</p><p>She folded the cover up from the bottom and pointed. </p><p>“There is bruising on his legs, consistent with being hit by a car, but not at very high velocity. Nothing broken, only superficial abrasions which caused a bit of bleeding, and haematoma around the knees and lower legs. He was probably knocked off his feet, though, there is also bruising on the elbow, and he hit his head.”</p><p>She replaced the cover and folded it back from the other end. </p><p>“Here. The impact didn’t break the skin, but caused a subdural haematoma. Possibly concussion.”</p><p>“Could that have killed him?” Hathaway asked. “If there was intracranial bleeding...”</p><p>“No, but it would have made him dazed and confused. He sustained these injuries only hours before death. I can only speculate, but from what I see, I think he was hit by a car, walked away from the accident but got increasingly confused, and eventually just lay down. He wasn’t thinking straight, and that’s why he didn’t seek any more suitable shelter. Cause of death was definitely hypothermia, from being exposed to the freezing temperatures we had last night.”</p><p>She looked at Hathaway, who was staring at the body with a grim expression, and added:</p><p>“It was a combination of unfortunate circumstances, James. It wasn’t anybody’s fault.”</p><p>James didn’t answer. Laura sighed, but decided to leave him there for a moment while she changed into her street clothes. She had a nagging feeling that this would be one of those cases where James blamed himself for doing something, or more likely not doing something, because he had vaguely known the victim. </p><p>When she returned to the lab, James was still there. She put a hand on his arm.</p><p>“I know it usually takes a couple of pints with Robbie to makes this all better, but in his absence, how about a coffee with me?”</p><p>James looked at her and smiled a little.</p><p>“Alright. Thank you.”</p><p>She took him to the nearest Costa and made him sit down while she got the drinks. He raised his eyebrows when she put a large hot chocolate in front of him, complete with a pointy hood of whipped cream, marshmallows and chocolate sauce.</p><p>“Go on,” she said, “it’ll be the most nutritious thing you have had all day.”</p><p>“Thanks,” he said. He didn’t contradict her, she noted. </p><p>They enjoyed their drinks in silence for a moment. Then he said:</p><p>“Do you expect me to talk?”</p><p>“No, and I’m planning to leave you alive as well. I just wanted to stop you brooding for half an hour. But if you do want to talk, I can listen. You know that.”</p><p>She had known James even before Lewis had come back from the BVI, and while they weren’t close, some sort of friendship had developed between them. </p><p>James spooned some of the cream into his mouth, then he sighed and said:</p><p>“It shouldn’t make any difference, but it’s always harder when you knew someone.”</p><p>“Why shouldn’t it? Of course it makes a difference. Did you know him well?”</p><p>“No. I chatted to him a few times, but he didn’t tell me much about himself. It was just casual talk. I bought him a cup of tea a few times. Gave him some books – he liked reading. Bought his magazines. He wasn’t a very good salesman, he said so himself. Quite shy, really. I know he slept rough sometimes in the summer, but mostly he could get a place in a shelter. He didn’t do drugs, didn’t drink much either, as far as I know. He was just a friendly guy, you know?”</p><p>Laura nodded, but didn’t interrupt. </p><p>“I just can’t help thinking, if I’d cared more...if I’d done more...I don’t know, I just feel like I let Kevin down.”</p><p>Laura had suspected that James would be feeling this way, and now she had to say something.</p><p>“You can’t be responsible for everyone and everything,” she said. “People have to take some responsibility for themselves. You can’t help them all, it’s impossible.”</p><p>“But what about those who can’t help themselves? I’m a police officer. Is it not my job to protect the weak, the vulnerable?”</p><p>“It is your job to make sure that those who commit crimes don’t get away with it. It is not your job to be a shepherd to all of society.”</p><p>“If I’d been a priest, that would have been my job.”</p><p>He suddenly looked up at her. “You know I was going to be a priest?”</p><p>“Yes, Robbie told me once. Don’t be angry with him – I never told anybody else.”</p><p>“That’s fine. I’m okay with you knowing.”</p><p>“But you are not a priest. You are a police officer.”</p><p>“Yes. I didn’t become a priest – I couldn’t. Perhaps by choosing something else I took the easy way.  So I wouldn’t have that responsibility, you know.”</p><p>Was this what Robbie had to put up with all the time? No wonder he thought his sergeant was an awkward sod. She reached across to put a hand on James’.</p><p>“I think that the sun will go round the moon before you take the easy way on anything,” she said.</p><p>He smiled at her.</p><p>“Sorry. And thanks.”</p><p>From the way he concentrated on his hot chocolate she could tell that the conversation was over. She hoped that she had helped him at least a little bit. She really hadn’t expected him to open up like that, even if it didn’t last long.</p><p>There was a lull in the usual coffee shop noises, and the Christmas carols playing in the background became audible for a moment.</p><p>“Can I ask you a personal question?” Laura said, her tone indicating that she wasn’t going to touch on anything deep and meaningful.</p><p>“You can ask. I can’t promise I will answer.”</p><p>“Did you ever sing the treble solo at the start of Once In Royal David’s City?”</p><p>He stared at her for a moment, then ducked his head in that way he had when he didn’t know whether to be proud or ashamed of something.</p><p>“Yeah. School concert.”</p><p>“How old were you?”</p><p>“Eight or nine, I think. I sang the whole of O Holy Night as well.”</p><p>“I can imagine it.”</p><p>He now had the familiar self-deprecating smirk on his face.</p><p>“Oh yes, I was a regular little Aled Jones. Or at least my music teacher thought so. He made me do Panis Angelicus, Oh For The Wings Of A Dove, Laudate Dominum...the lot.”</p><p>“Wow. Do you still sing?”</p><p>“Oh no. It didn’t last anyway. A couple of years later someone came along who was even better, so I was off the hook. And when I changed schools, I didn’t let on at the new place. I was supposed to concentrate on my piano playing anyway. After all, that’s what the scholarship was based on.”</p><p>Laura didn’t show it, but she was astonished. James wasn’t usually that open. In the last half hour he had revealed more of himself to her than he had in the preceding years. Perhaps she should feed him hot chocolate more often. </p><p>Sadly they couldn’t extend their coffee-and-hot-chocolate break for very long. James and Laura parted at the door of the coffee shop and went back to their respective places of work.</p><p>When Hathaway got back to the office, he set himself the task of finding out where Kevin had been and what he had been doing in the days before his death. It was most likely that he had been staying at a shelter somewhere in the city. These were of course open over the holidays, so when he rang them up one by one, he could more or less count on someone answering. He got lucky on his third try. The manager confirmed that Kevin was well known at the shelter, and that he had been staying there for about a fortnight. In fact, he had known Kevin for years, as he had been staying at the shelter on and off. Kevin had never told him anything about himself, though. Yes, of course the sergeant could come round and talk to him in person, he said.</p><p>When he arrived, the manager took Hathaway into his tiny, cramped office. The news of Kevin’s death visibly saddened him, but he wasn’t exactly upset. He took it with something like quiet resignation.</p><p>“I was a bit surprised when Kevin didn’t turn up last night,” he said. “He’s been staying here for a bit, went out during the day to sell the Big Issue, but he came back every night. He had one of our single rooms. His things are still here.”</p><p>“Can I see the room?” Hathaway asked.</p><p>“Yes, of course.” </p><p>The manager led him up the stairs to the first floor, and opened the door to the tiny bedroom which had been Kevin’s last home. It looked a bit worn and tired, but was reasonably well kept. It was cheaply furnished with a single bed, a bedside cabinet, a narrow wardrobe and a chair. Hathaway opened the wardrobe, which held only a pair of trousers. A holdall containing more clothes was half-shoved under the bed. Some freshly laundered underwear was piled onto the chair. The bedside cabinet contained a razor and shaving foam, a bottle of shower gel, toothpaste and toothbrush, and a reusable coffee cup with lid. On the top were a couple of books. James was strangely relieved that none of them were the ones he had given to Kevin. Perhaps he had passed those on to someone else. Kevin had liked reading, but his tastes had run to Dan Brown and Tom Clancy. He rifled through the clothes in the holdall, but didn’t reveal anything interesting. There was nothing personal in the room,  nothing that would hint at Kevin’s life or personality.<br/>
Hathaway turned to leave. </p><p>“What should I do with his stuff?” the manager asked.</p><p>Hathaway shrugged. </p><p>“Give it to the others. Thanks for your help.”</p><p>Back at the office Hathaway dropped onto his chair and tried to figure out what to do next. The whiteboards with his cold case timelines stared him in the face, but there was no urgency to that. Kevin’s death wasn’t really something that needed investigating either. Laura had ruled it an accident, and no crime had been committed. But still it nagged at him. It might have been a convergence of unfortunate circumstances, but he wanted to find out what exactly had happened. Innocent would probably tell him to leave it and concentrate his energies on something more profitable, but Innocent wasn’t here – she had taken the holidays off, and left Chief Inspector Hawthorne in charge. Hawthorne didn’t know Hathaway very well and  probably wouldn’t look too closely at what he was doing provided he didn’t draw her attention to it. </p><p>Laura had said that Kevin had been most likely knocked down by a car, so the obvious next step would be to find the car or any evidence of the accident. It was nobody’s fault, Laura had told him, but Hathaway wasn’t sure that he agreed. If the collision with a car had caused Kevin’s head injury, which had ultimately led to his death, wasn’t the driver of the car to blame in some way? Perhaps he was trying to shift some of the guilt he felt over Kevin’s death onto someone else, Hathaway thought. But his main motivation was simply to find the out the truth, or so he told himself.</p><p>Kevin had died sometime during the night – Laura couldn’t be very exact, but she thought it had been during the early hours of the morning. The accident would have happened therefore a few hours earlier. The body had been found near The Plain, and he didn’t know whether Kevin had been moving towards the town centre or going down towards the Cowley Road or St Clements. What he had been doing down there Hathaway couldn’t imagine, but at that time in the evening he thought Kevin would have been on his way to the shelter which was near the centre. He would have to take a guess, and decided to start with the assumption that the collision with the car had occurred on the High or possibly Long Wall Street. If he could obtain CCTV footage from those streets from, say, 10 pm onwards on the 24th, that would at least give him a starting point. If he didn’t come up with anything, he could expand his search area further south. </p><p>Hathaway went in search of the colleague who could give him what he needed. Julie, who was a whiz at finding the exact bit of footage required, wasn’t there – it looked like she was one of the lucky ones who had been taken off the rota over Christmas. Fortunately PC Earnshaw, who was there instead, was just as competent, and soon Hathaway was furnished with several hours’ worth of fuzzy grey footage with which to occupy himself. Two and a half hours, five cups of coffee and three cigarettes later he had to admit to failure. Nothing resembling a car knocking down a pedestrian could be seen on any of the recordings. Hathaway expanded his time-frame slightly, but to no avail. He was still sure, though, that his theory was sound. The public cameras didn’t cover every yard of the High Street, and something might well have happened out of shot. Then, of course, it might not have happened on the High Street at all. Hathaway stopped the last bit of film he was watching to rub his eyes, He was getting tired, and at the back of his mind he was aware that probably he shouldn’t be investigating this at all, but he couldn’t let go. </p><p>He started the video again and watched as a car slowly moved past the camera in the direction of Magdalen Bridge. Shortly afterwards a pedestrian came into few, walking slowly and uncertainly as if drunk.  James stared. Could that be it? He looked closer. The pedestrian was a man, wearing an anorak with the hood up, carrying a plastic bag in one hand. James stopped the film. The footage was in black and white, but he thought he could make out a garment of a lighter shade over the anorak – the Big Issue vest? James looked again, and he was pretty certain now that the man was Kevin. If he was stumbling along like a drunkard, it meant that he had been hit by the car beforehand. Perhaps it had been the car he had just seen. He rewound the footage, but no details of the car were visible. And it looked like the collision had taken place just out of range of the camera.</p><p>Hathaway took a deep breath and stretched. So the public cameras hadn’t caught anything, and without confirmation that what he suspected had really taken place he felt he couldn’t pursue this line of investigation. But there were other cameras. A number of University buildings had High Street frontages, and he would be surprised if they didn’t have the odd camera attached to them. University security would be on duty even on Christmas Day. Perhaps he got lucky there.<br/>
He reached for the telephone.<br/>
However, he couldn’t get hold of anyone. Perhaps it was too late in the day. He would try again tomorrow. James looked at his watch. It was gone eight o’clock, and he was suddenly aware that he was hungry. At some point he had supplemented Laura’s hot chocolate with a stale sandwich, but that was all he had eaten all day. Time to call it a day, perhaps. </p><p>His flat was cold when he unlocked the door, but it would warm up soon enough once he switched the heating on. He didn’t fancy cooking a proper meal this late in the day – it was nine o’clock by now – so he resorted to a carton of soup, which he warmed on the stove, and a couple of mince pies. It was Christmas today, he suddenly remembered. Funny, he hadn’t really thought of it at all. He had other things on his mind.</p><p>When he finally went to bed, he found it difficult to fall asleep. Too many thoughts were chasing each other in his head, but without any order or logic to them. His mind jumped wildly from one thing to the next. A few times he felt himself dozing off and then jerking awake again, until he finally dropped off without realising.</p>
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<a name="section0004"><h2>4. Boxing Day</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This chapter contains mentions of suicide, because Hathaway is called to the scene of one.</p></blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The call came at 6 o’clock this time. Hathaway realised that he must have fallen asleep after all, because he had to force his eyes open as he groped for his phone. A body had been found in a house on the Cowley Road. Hanged, probably suicide, but nobody knew for sure at this stage. James tumbled out of bed, switched on the coffee machine in the kitchen, had a quick shower, put the coffee into a travel mug and drove to the scene.</p><p>As expected, he found the SOCO team plus Laura already there. A couple of paramedics were loading up their gear and drove off. Clearly there hadn’t been anything for them to do. As he approached the front door of the house, the PC stationed there stopped him and directed him to the back.<br/>
“Granny flat, entrance is at the back,” he explained.</p><p>James trudged past a couple of neighbouring houses, turned into a side street and then left onto a footpath along the backs. He crossed a back yard overgrown with brambles and entered.  The door led straight into the kitchen, behind which were a tiny sitting room and larger bedroom. It was in this that the body was found. The technicians had laid it onto the bed, and Laura had begun her examination. She only looked up briefly to nod at him.</p><p>“He was hanging from there,” one of the technicians said to James, pointing to a hook in the ceiling. “Looks like he put it there for the purpose – fingerprints might tell us.”</p><p>“How was he found?” Hathaway asked. “I saw you guys looking at the door. Burglary?”</p><p>“It looks like the door was forced, we don’t know yet if anything is missing. We heard that there was an anonymous call to the police this morning. From the burglar perhaps?”</p><p>“He’s been dead for a lot longer than that,” Laura chimed in. “Probably since yesterday. What I can see is consistent with asphyxiation, and the injuries from the ligature point to hanging as well.”</p><p>Hathaway took a step closer to the bed to look at the body. It was that of a middle-aged man, with thinning, grey hair, slightly overweight, wearing a tracksuit and socks, no shoes.</p><p>“Do we have a name?”</p><p>“Not yet,” the SOCO replied, “but there’s bound to be something here. Haven’t had time to find it yet.”</p><p>"Sarge!" one of the SOCOs called from the kitchen.</p><p>Hathaway left the bedroom to see what he had found. He held a sheet of paper, already in a plastic cover, out to James.</p><p>"Suicide note," he said.</p><p>James looked at the paper. It was a page of an ordinary, ruled notebook. Written on it with blue biro were the words:</p><p>
  <i>I have failed in everything. Nothing will be alright ever again. I’m sorry, but I can’t take it anymore.</i>
</p><p>Pretty convincing, he thought. Of course, they needed to conduct their investigation, but at the moment there wasn’t really anything to contradict an assumption of suicide.</p><p>Hathaway handed the note back to the SOCO and turned to PC Aboah, who was securing the back door.</p><p>“Have you talked to anyone in the main house?” he asked.</p><p>“Nobody home,” she replied. "I managed to speak to a man taking his dog for a very early walk. According to him, the house is let to students. They’ve probably gone home for the holiday.”</p><p>James went back to the front of the house. A couple of phone calls confirmed the story of the anonymous tip. The call had come in from a public phone box (one of the few which still existed and worked). After giving the address where the body was found the caller refused to give a name or explain how he had entered the house and simply hung up. Perhaps they would be able to identify the phone from which the call was made. The choice had to be extremely limited. It was not priority for James, though.</p><p>When Laura had finished her preliminary examination and followed in the wake of the body, which was being removed now, she found James leaning against his car, smoking a cigarette and drinking from a travel mug. In the black coat he always wore in winter he looked even taller and thinner than he was, she thought. She also thought that she had been right to worry about him yesterday. There were faint purple shadows under his eyes, hinting at a lack of sleep. He smiled at her as she approached, despite the stern expression on her face.</p><p>"That’s no proper breakfast for a growing lad," she said. He almost laughed at that.</p><p>"You do a very good impression of DI Lewis," he told her. "And anyway, I was just waiting for the shops to open."</p><p>"Alright, I’ll pretend I believe you. I’ll call you when I’ve got results."</p><p>"I look forward to it."</p><p>James watched as Laura drove off and then returned to the flat. There would be a bit more space now for him to have a look round. He put on a pair of gloves and started looking through the detritus on the desk. There was a mess of papers, torn envelopes, sweet wrappers and pens, but it didn’t take Hathaway long to discover a few unpaid bills and “Final reminder” notices. He also learned from the address that the occupant’s name was Dave Eggleston. He opened the desk drawer to find more bills, including an unopened reminder to pay the TV licence. He looked round the room. There was a TV set in the tiny sitting room, but he didn’t see a computer, or an obvious space where a computer might have been. Eggleston didn’t seem to own one. It didn’t look like it had been taken by the mystery burglar.
Hathaway dug deeper into the drawer and pulled out an envelope with paperwork from the Jobcentre. It appeared that Eggleston had lost his job about a year ago and had lived on benefits ever since.<br/>
A further search of the flat didn’t turn up anything very interesting. There was a phone, but it appeared to be disconnected, and there were no messages on the answering machine. Hathaway didn’t find a mobile phone. Perhaps the SOCOs would turn one up.<br/>
Hathaway returned to the sitting room. There was not enough space for much more than a sagging couch and the TV. Some shelves in the corner held a few paperbacks, but mainly DVDs and even a number of old VHS tapes. A very small table next to the couch had another pile of papers on it, and underneath a couple of pizza service menus Hathaway discovered a wallet. Inside was a small amount of cash, a bank card, a couple of supermarket loyalty cards and a photograph of a woman and two children. Eggleston’s wife and kids? There was nothing else in the flat which hinted at the existence of a family. James’ heart sank at the prospect of having to find the people in the photograph only to tell them that their husband and father was dead.</p><p>He called out to the chief technician who was still in the kitchen:</p><p>“Do you mind if I take his wallet and some of the papers? I’ll log it when I get to the office.”</p><p>The SOCO came to him and looked at the wallet.</p><p>“I take it there is no evidence of robbery?”</p><p>Hathaway shook his head.</p><p>“Sure, help yourself. We’ll wind this up in bit, I think, there isn’t really anything to find.”</p><p>Hathaway went to his car and came back with a plastic box, into which he put the wallet, the demands and bills, and the Jobcentre envelope. Then he told PC Aboah to keep securing the scene until the SOCOs had finished and drove to the office.<br/>
When he had switched on his computer and opened his email, he saw that there was a message from Lewis, sent from his private email account. It read:</p><p>“Merry Christmas! I really hope this isn’t the only fun you’ll have”, followed by a link.</p><p>Hathaway clicked on it with some trepidation. A number of cartoon reindeers popped up on his screen, sorted themselves into some sort of formation and began to jump up and down to a tinny rendition of We Wish You A Merry Christmas, which made Gurdip, who was passing the open office door, stop and stare. James had to smile despite himself. Later on he would take a moment to plot his revenge and send Lewis the most hideous e-card he could find. His boss deserved nothing less.<br/>
First, however, he had to make a start with the apparent suicide case. Until he had Laura’s report he would take nothing for granted, although he had to admit that it really didn’t look like anything else. But even so there were a number of questions. Who was Dave Eggleston, and why would he kill himself? What had he been doing with his life? And who were the people in the photograph?</p><p>He decided to take the address as his starting point. It did not take him long to find out that the house was owned by a Mr Singh, resident in Abingdon. In fact, his residence apparently doubled as the headquarters of his minicab firm, and it was an employee who answered the phone when he called. Hathaway identified himself, and he was put through to the owner without difficulty. Mr Singh was happy to confirm that he owned the house in Oxford where the body was found. He had indeed rented the main house to four students and the flat at the back to Dave Eggleston. The house had been divided up like this for many years, in fact it had been like this when he bought it. He reacted with surprise and dismay at the news of Eggleston’s death, but wasn’t particularly shocked.</p><p>“To tell you the truth, I was on the verge of evicting him,” Mr Singh said. “He hadn’t paid the rent for October and November, and it didn’t look like he was going to pay for December either. I’d already told him, either you pay, or in January you move out. What was I supposed to do? I couldn’t let him live there for nothing. How was I supposed to know that he would do that?”</p><p>Hathaway hastened to assure Mr Singh that he couldn’t have known and that it had nothing to do with him, and hung up.

A picture started to emerge of Dave Eggleston’s life. No job, no money, bills he couldn’t pay, demands piling up, and the threat of homelessness hanging over him. Enough to push some people over the edge. Still, Hathaway was some way from knowing the whole truth, so he would keep digging.</p><p>It only took him an hour to find Eggleston’s wife at an address in Bicester. He still didn’t relish the prospect of having to go there and tell her that her husband was dead. Perhaps he could take someone from Family Liaison with him, so he wouldn’t be on his own. He decided to wait, though, until he had the results from Laura.
There wasn’t much more that the papers he had taken from the Cowley Road flat could tell him. They only confirmed the picture of a man in serious financial trouble. Perhaps when they spoke to his wife she would be able to add a more personal dimension.</p><p>James took a few minutes at lunch to eat a sandwich and select a Christmas card for Lewis. He managed to find an Australian one depicting Father Christmas in an old-fashioned striped bathing costume, riding the waves on a surfboard.</p><p>In the afternoon he received reports both from SOCO and from Laura, which pretty much confirmed the assumption of suicide. Laura told him that everything she had found was consistent with the victim having killed himself by hanging, most probably some time in the evening of the 24th of December. SOCO advised him that they had found Eggleston’s fingerprints on the suicide note and on the hook in the ceiling, but no one else’s. They had also found that the lock of the door had been forced – not very difficult to do – but that the burglar hadn’t left any usable traces. Nothing seemed to be missing from the flat. It looked like the burglar had entered, assuming the place to be empty, had come across the corpse dangling from the bedroom ceiling and fled.</p><p>Hathaway sighed. It was time to contact the dead man’s wife and give her the news. He decided to tell Chief Inspector Hawthorne what he was going to do before he went and to ask her advice regarding Family Liaison. She listened to his brief report, approved his course of action and agreed that he shouldn’t go on his own.<br/>
“Take Meera with you,” she advised and made the call herself.<br/>
Meera turned out to be a well-dressed, middle-aged woman who projected a friendly competence which was just what one would hope for in a Family Liaison Officer. Hathaway was mildly annoyed that she had clearly labelled him as “young and inexperienced” at first glance, but on the whole he had to admit that he couldn’t ask for a better person by his side for this task.</p><p>In the end the whole thing passed off differently than he had expected. Far from being overcome with grief, the widow showed a barely concealed attitude of “good riddance”and annoyance at the prospect of having to arrange the funeral and sorting out the finances. What she told the officers did indeed complete the picture of Dave Eggleston which Hathaway had been building in his mind. The main cause of the disaster seemed to have been a gambling addiction. Eggleston started to neglect everything else in his life: his job at the Mini plant in Cowley, which he lost soon enough, his wife, his children. Eventually the wife had left him, taking the children with her. She was pushing for a divorce, which hadn’t come through yet. On the whole, she managed to convey, her husband had turned out to be a massive disappointment, and she had cut him out of her life. Eggleston had sunk ever deeper into debt, and, overcome by money worries, depression at the break-down of his relationships and a sense of all round failure, had finally taken his own life – the only escape route he could see.<br/>
Hathaway drove back to Oxford deep in thought. It was a common enough story, and one he had encountered before, but it worried him every time. He tried to imagine what went through someone’s head when they could see suicide as the only option. At the same time he worried that if he thought about it too deeply he could imagine only too well. He spent large parts of his life with a cloud of mild depression hanging over him, but nothing he had experienced had ever pushed him over that particular edge. In his darkest moments he had sometimes wished for a mechanism or a magic spell which would make him disappear and even prevent him from ever having existed – so that his absence wouldn’t be noticed – but he had never been tempted to take any practical action.</p><p>Back at the office he shook off those thoughts and sat down to prepare a comprehensive report on the case.<br/>
When he had finished that, he still had time left to turn his attention to the case of Kevin’s death again. He tried calling Oxford University security again, and this time he got lucky. When he explained what he was after and why, the man at the other end was very helpful. He asked Hathaway to specify times and locations, and promised to send over what footage he could find.<br/>
Having accomplished that, he set himself the task of finding what he could in the various databases he had access to.<br/>
After a few hours, he knew a lot more about Kevin’s life. To his surprise he had not always been the shy, quiet man he had known. He had been arrested twice, both times for his part in a pub brawl. Nothing recent, though, the last time had been in 1993. He had also found out that Kevin had been married once. That had been even longer ago – there was a record of the divorce in 1990. Hathaway contemplated briefly whether he should notify the ex-wife of Kevin’s death, but she had clearly not been part of his life for a long time, so he decided against it.<br/>
These bare bones however could not really tell him what Kevin’s life had been like. Had it been the divorce which had precipitated his descent into unemployment and homelessness? Had there been mental health problems? There was no record of any, but that didn’t mean anything. Hathaway felt compelled to find out what he could, to try and understand Kevin as a person, but he realised that there was plenty he would never know. He also realised that he risked a bollocking from Innocent when she found out what he was spending his time on. Somehow it had become evening again – it was close to eight o’clock when he checked his watch – so he decided to call it a day.</p>
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<a name="section0005"><h2>5. Between the years</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When Chief Superintendent Innocent returned after the holidays, she was pleased to read in Hathaway’s interim report that he had turned up a viable lead in the cold cases he and Lewis were looking at. She was also pleased at his competent handling of the suicide case, and approved his clear and comprehensive report of that.</p><p>She was not best pleased, however, when it transpired that the sergeant had spent inordinate amounts of time and energy on investigating the accidental death of a homeless person. And she was positively angry the next day, when she found that Hathaway had summoned a blameless member of the public to be interrogated about a minor road traffic accident.</p><p>Hathaway had kept his investigations into Kevin’s death as quiet as he could without crossing the line into violating regulations and provoking disciplinary action. The security chap had been as good as his word and had sent Hathaway a couple of DVDs with camera footage showing a stretch of the High Street. A careful examination of the footage had revealed what Hathaway had been hoping for: proof of a collision between Kevin and a car. The recording only showed the car from behind, so the details of what had happened were still unclear. Still, the facts were indisputable, and what was more, the registration of the car could be clearly seen. Which had ultimately led to the situation which Innocent, to her chagrin, discovered too late to prevent. She could only watch as Hathaway conducted his interview with the driver of the car.</p><p>Hathaway had made it clear to the man that he was only being questioned as a witness, but his serious and aloof demeanour didn’t do anything to put him at ease.</p><p>“So,” said Hathaway, “you admit that you ran into a pedestrian on the High Street. Did you not think to stop and check if he had been injured?”</p><p>“I did!” the man shouted. “I stopped and got out of the car to see what had happened. The guy stood up and walked away. So obviously he was alright. I didn’t do anything wrong.”</p><p>“Did you speak to him? Did you ask him if he was hurt?”</p><p>“No! He just got up and went away. So I drove off as well. Am I being accused of something here?”</p><p>“No.”</p><p>“Can I go then?”</p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>The man stormed out of the room, shaking his head and muttering. Jean Innocent sighed and stuck her head round the door.</p><p>“Hathaway? My office – now.”</p><p>Hathaway clearly knew what was coming, and he was prepared to accept his bollocking stoically. He didn’t look particularly contrite though.</p><p>“What were you thinking?” Innocent asked, not really expecting an answer. And indeed, none was forthcoming.</p><p>“This was a simple accident. It was unfortunate that a chain of circumstances led to a person’s death, but nothing about it was in any way suspicious. Why have you wasted all this time on something that does not warrant any investigation?”</p><p>When she said “all this time”, she thought of Hathaway’s overtime sheet which was the usual mixture of obfuscation and downright fabrication, something she had long ago learned to turn a blind eye to.</p><p>“I just wanted to find out the truth,” Hathaway said.</p><p>Innocent made an effort not to bury her face in her hands. She appreciated the sergeant’s tenacity and thoroughness, but Hathaway on the trail of The Truth was one of the more migraine-inducing aspects of her job.</p><p>“Well, as far as I can see, you have found it. You drop this non-case, as of now. Understood?”</p><p>“Yes, ma’am.”</p><p>“Right. I have another task for you, and I want you to get onto it right away.”</p><p>It ended with Innocent giving Hathaway a massive end-of-year report and statistics to compile. It was clearly designed both as a punishment and to keep him out of mischief for a few days until Lewis was back. Hathaway recognised it as such, but, although it was de rigeur in police stations everywhere to moan about the paperwork, he always found at least some satisfaction in a well-structured report or a meaningful statistic. And Innocent was right, he had found out what exactly had happened to Kevin. There was nothing more to be done. All that was left was a lingering sadness that he had not done enough for Kevin while he was alive.</p><p>The reports for the Chief Super certainly kept him busy, and there were the cold cases to consider as well, which he pondered from time to time, without gaining any startling new insights. His plan of chasing the fake company names which had adorned the vans sighted at the crime scenes was delayed because quite a few businesses had closed for the week, and he couldn’t reach anyone.</p><p> </p><p>On the last day of the year Hathaway suddenly realised that he had been taken off the rota for the second half of the 31st and the first half of the 1st. Actually, he had known this before, but had forgotten. Now he was at a loss as to what to do with himself. Staying at the office was no longer an option, with Innocent on the prowl. He was just thinking about how he could fill the empty hours when his phone rang. Not his work phone, but his personal mobile. It was Jack, one of his band mates.</p><p>“Hey, James,” he said, “are you free this afternoon? We are getting together for an impromptu jam session. I need a break from the in-laws, Simon needs a break from the kids, and Katie wants to introduce her brother to us, he’s come over from Canada. Father Peter is letting me have the key for the assembly room. Thomas can’t make it, and Keith has gone skiing, if you can believe it. But we were hoping that you at least would come. You up for it?”</p><p>“As it happens, I’m off work this afternoon. When are you meeting?”</p><p>“At three. We’ll all have to go back to our respective homes for the New Year’s Eve celebrations. Bring your guitar. And something to eat or drink, if you have it. If not, doesn’t matter. Just come.” </p><p>“Alright, I will. See you later.”</p><p>Suddenly James found himself looking forward to the afternoon. He hadn’t been invited to any parties tonight, which suited him – not that there had been anyone to invite him anyway. But it would be pleasant to spend a few hours with friends.</p><p> </p><p>He was the last to arrive at the church. The so-called assembly room was simply a large room, equipped with chairs and some tables, which still bore the decorations from a recent senior citizens’ coffee morning. There was also a piano, quite a good one, as he remembered. They had used this space a few times for rehearsals. The others greeted him with cheers, and Katie came forward to introduce her brother Adrian, who was a professional oboist with a Canadian orchestra. He hadn’t brought his instrument, but he turned out to be a decent pianist, too, and was happy to join in with their music session. They just played a few pieces for fun, not rehearsing for anything, and there was a lot of improvisation, wrong notes and laughter. Adrian played the Maple Leaf Rag in honour of his adopted home, and the others persuaded him and James to play Schubert’s Marche Militaire, which wasn’t a great success because neither of them remembered all of it, and it ended in chaos and more laughter.</p><p>Eventually they grouped themselves around one of the tables. Katie had been shopping at Ikea and distributed warm glögg from a thermos flask and handed round a tin of ginger snaps. James had brought a box of chocolates, which he had received from a colleague. He had appreciated the gesture, but he was mystified why she would give him anything. He wasn’t very fond of chocolates anyway, so he was happy to give them to those who enjoyed them more. There was also tea, and more biscuits, and they all sat around, chatting.</p><p>James had been placed next to Adrian and took the opportunity to talk musical shop with him, asking him about his instrument and what playing in an orchestra was like. The talk turned to oboe-like instruments in other cultures, and Katie said:</p><p>“They’ve got a kind of oboe in India, haven’t they? What’s it called? James?”</p><p>James stared at them for a moment and then blurted out:</p><p>“I don’t know!”</p><p>Katie and Jack burst out laughing.</p><p>“What’s so funny?” asked Adrian, slightly puzzled.</p><p>“Oh, James,” Katie gasped between giggles, “you looked so shocked at not knowing something!”</p><p>Jack put his arm around James’ shoulders.</p><p>“Don’t worry, even if you don’t know everything, we love you anyway.”</p><p>“Hear hear!” Simon lifted his plastic cup. “To James!”</p><p>“To James!” the others echoed, and James blushed with embarrassment. He had soon caught himself, however, and resumed his conversation with Adrian. Katie nudged Jack and winked at him. Jack winked back. They both had noticed the admiring glances which Adrian had been casting in James’ direction all afternoon, and it hadn’t escaped their attention that Adrian had been an enthusiastic supporter of the suggestion that James should squeeze onto the piano stool with him to play the Schubert piece. They had also noticed that James was completely oblivious, which added to their amusement. It was a harmless situation, Katie knew that Adrian wouldn’t make a move on someone he had only met a few hours ago, and nothing would come of it. They could let him have his fun, and James would never know that they were having some fun at his expense.</p><p>They broke up at around six, as the various families expected their wayward members to return for dinner. James went home and spent some time pottering around the flat, putting a load of laundry through the machine and making himself some kind of meal. He still didn’t fancy any elaborate cooking, so he resorted to the reliable fallback option, pasta and sauce. He still had some of his homemade tomato sauce in the freezer, and over the pasta, together with a few olives and a sprinkling of dried oregano it made for quite a satisfying dish.</p><p>After a bit of tidying up he ended up on the sofa, with a glass of wine, half-heartedly playing a few moves in the game of chess he had going on against himself. The last day of the year – surely he was supposed to look back on the year that had passed, and make plans and resolutions for the new year, but somehow he didn’t have the energy to do it. It hadn’t been a brilliant year, but it hadn’t been a bad year, either. What did he wish for? More of the same, really. For Lewis not to retire. Yes, he realised with a jolt, that was probably the most important thing on his mind. He knew that it wasn’t up to him, and it shouldn’t make any difference, at least not for his career, but he knew that it would be a change too far. He didn’t think he would want to stay in the police force without Lewis. He hadn’t really explored the deeper reasons why that should be, and he certainly didn’t want to do so now, but he knew that that was how he felt. Fortunately Lewis seemed to have made up his mind to stay. For now. James sighed. He reckoned he was safe for another year. After that? Who knew.</p><p>He leaned back and rested his head against the sofa, took another sip of wine and closed his eyes for a moment.</p><p> </p><p>Midnight. All over Oxford people were singing Auld Lang Syne, popping champagne corks and toasting the new year, hugging and kissing, cheering and making noise, gathering in the streets and setting off fireworks.</p><p>James Hathaway slept.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Notes for the Chapter:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
          <p>The instrument Katie is thinking of is probably the Shanai or Shenai, an instrument from northern India with a double reed, like an oboe. Yeah, I had to look this up.</p>
        </blockquote></div></div>
<a name="section0006"><h2>6. Into the New Year</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was after 9 in the morning when James finally woke up properly, still in his clothes but in his bedroom. He dimly remembered waking up on the couch during the night and managing to creep into his bed before falling asleep again. Although he’d now had a proper lie-in, he didn’t feel refreshed. His sleep had been punctuated by bad dreams, which he couldn’t remember but which left him with a vague feeling of failure, disappointment and abandonment.</p><p>He sighed as he got up and discarded his rumpled clothes. After a shower and a pot of coffee he felt a bit better. He did a few more tidying and cleaning jobs until it was time to go into work. But his mind couldn’t really settle on anything. He tried to finish the Superintendent’s massive report, but wasn’t really satisfied with his final draft, so he set it aside for a final final one. He tried to bend his mind to some other tasks, but found his thoughts flitting here and there, not able to really concentrate on anything. In the end he had busied himself with re-arranging the boxes of evidence and dismantling the timeline jigsaw, so that Lewis would actually be able to sit at his desk when he returned, but he didn’t feel that he had achieved anything proper. For once in his life he was glad to get out of the office when he was supposed to. Not the best start to the new year, he thought. Oh well. Tomorrow Lewis would be back, and things would be better.</p><p>When Lewis came into work on the morning of the 2nd, his sergeant was already there. Hathaway greeted him with a smile and a “welcome back, sir”, and went to fetch him a mug of tea. Lewis took it gratefully, but when Hathaway sat down again, he asked:</p><p>“What have you been doing with yourself? You look done in.”</p><p>“Not all of us have had a holiday, sir.”</p><p>“Yeah, but even so…”</p><p>He didn’t finish the sentence. Clearly Hathaway hadn’t taken his advice not to work too hard, but he knew that if he tried to find out what exactly had caused the man to look so pale and peaky, he would only get evasive answers. So instead he asked about the cold cases he had left Hathaway with, and was glad to see his sergeant become a bit more animated as he outlined the progress he had made in Lewis’ absence.</p><p>At lunchtime he took the excuse of getting himself a sandwich to pay a brief visit to Laura. After wishing her a happy new year and showing her a few snaps of his grandson, he came round to the question he had really wanted to ask.</p><p>“What’s up with Hathaway? I know he’s been working, but he looks worn out.”</p><p>“Ah,” said Laura. “He’s had one of those cases, you know.”</p><p>“ 'One of those'?”</p><p>“Where he beats himself up for not doing enough and blames himself for all the iniquities of this world.”</p><p>She briefly outlined the story of the death of the Big Issue vendor, and how it had affected James.</p><p>“Oh dear. I’d better go for a drink with him.”</p><p>“You make it sound like a chore.”</p><p>“Oh no, it’s a pleasure. You know what good company he can be. It’s just exhausting having to look after someone who doesn’t want to be looked after.”</p><p>“There’s no one better to do it, Robbie. I’m glad he’s got you. Actually, I’m glad you’ve got each other.”</p><p>“And I’m glad I’ve got you to say such nice things about me.”</p><p>They smiled at each other. Then Robbie said:</p><p>“If I got some takeaway and asked him round to my place, do you think he would come?”</p><p>Laura shrugged. “Worth a try.”</p><p>And so Lewis did try when he got back to the office. He made an effort to keep his invitation as casual as possible:</p><p>“I’m thinking of taking it easy and getting some takeaway tonight,” he said. “Why don’t you come round to mine and help me eat it, and I can bore you with the photos I took in Manchester?”</p><p>Hathaway hesitated with the answer, and Lewis could see that he had to work up to something. To what, though? Did he really have to think so hard about accepting an invitation to consume some Indian food at someone else’s house? Or was he figuring out the best way to say no? But when Hathaway finally answered, he said:</p><p>“If you’re getting the food, why don’t you come round to my place? I’ve got beer, and there’s a bottle of some very good red left as well.”</p><p>Lewis was surprised and gratified. After all the years that they had worked together, he could count the times he had been in Hathaway’s flat on one hand. It clearly was some sort of sanctuary for him, and he guarded it as closely as he did his personal space.</p><p>“Sure,” he said, still keeping it casual. “Shall we say 7 o’clock?”</p><p>Inwardly he sighed. Why did everything with this bloke have to be so bloody difficult? He was aware that there was a whole lot more going on beneath the surface of an invitation to share some takeaway. He wished he could just have said “I can see you’re troubled by something, want to talk about it?” But of course he couldn’t say that to Hathaway, it would have scared him right off. Not that he talked about his feelings either, but Hathaway took everything to a whole new level of complexity - “awkward sod” didn’t even begin to describe it. There were all these hidden undercurrents, so much going on in his head that Lewis was not even dimly aware of. Funny how any kind of friendship had been able to develop between them, but despite everything he knew that was what they had. And perhaps just by being there, as a friend, providing a couple of hours of distraction and company, he could do Hathaway some good.</p><p>When Lewis arrived at the flat, carrying bags of the promised food, Hathaway opened the door wearing jeans, a hoodie and thick socks. Lewis was always amused to see his sergeant in this sort of casual get-up, and today it made him look like a student who got interrupted in the middle of an essay. He could still sense some tension in him though, in his expression and his posture – did he have second thoughts about inviting Lewis into his space?</p><p>But after a second he smiled, opened the door wider and said:</p><p>“Come in.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>"The time is now, the place is here,<br/>And the whole world is filled with cheer" - Run DMC, "Christmas in Hollis"</p></blockquote></div></div>
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